


Hell Is Other People

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Episode: s09e11 Heaven Sent, Episode: s09e12 Hell Bent, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, The Doctor's Confession Dial, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 15:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6861508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deep within the Confession Dial, there is a room the Doctor fears above all others. It seems innocuous enough: four walls, a fire, mismatched armchairs - but it is the occupants that render it his own personal hell. Because each time he finds the room, there is a different family present. Each has lost a loved one, and each considers it his fault. Each demands an apology.</p><p>It would be torture enough if that were all. But each of their loved ones has Clara's face, and he begins to realise the true depths of her sacrifice when she entered his time stream...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hell Is Other People

**Author's Note:**

> This is an idea I've been toying with for a while, and evidently, the middle of finals was the opportune moment to write and post such a fic... oops. Anyway. 
> 
> The title comes the famous line: "l'enfer, c'est les autres / hell is other people," from the play _Huis Clos_ by Jean-Paul Sartre.

The room was, of course, utterly nondescript from the outside. The castle, in its quest for deception, would change its appearance each time he happened upon it, so that each time he stumbled through the unfamiliar door, his hearts would soar in unison at the relief of finding sanctuary, before stuttering uncomfortably as he was forced to recall the true nature of the room – the one room that the Time Lords had crafted for him, with unusual yet precise specificity, with a targeted desire to see him suffer for his crimes and atone for his sins in the most painful way possible. 

The room was, in all honesty, entirely unremarkable. Nothing about it was ostentatious or memorable: a collection of armchairs, a fireplace, and a wide window, nothing about it would have instilled terror in him, except for the occupants. The first time he had happened upon the room, he had though it to be a hallucination, a delirious vision brought on by insufficient sleep and food. Clara had always stressed the importance of both of them to his wellbeing, and he considered, that first time, a number of scientific reasons that the occupants had appeared as they had to him. He’d even formulated a kind of equation: lack of food + no sleep + thinking about Clara = _hallucinatory experiences of the distinctly bizarre variety._

That was until the occupants of the room held up a photograph – small, black and white, nothing remarkable – and began to speak, and the Doctor felt the room lurch under his feet as he understood, with damning finality, that this was not a hallucination, but rather a way of torturing him further, a punishment that would take root in his hearts painfully and worm its way into his brain, lurking there and provoking a sense of guilt that consumed his every waking moment in this hellhole. As realisation dawned, the only thing he could do was pray, but even praying was not, perhaps, enough to spare him from the pain of entering _the_ room, not enough to save him from the ordeal that confronted him with unavoidable finality. 

He’d told himself, after that first time, that perhaps the room had been a fluke – a one-off, designed to scare him into a confession, and then following its lack of success, been removed. Perhaps it would not appear to him again, he told himself, once he had atoned for his sins, once he had offered stuttered words of apology, but then he had stumbled into it a year or so later, and there had been different occupants, and he had understood then that this would be a pattern, this would be part of a routine that Clara herself had helped to establish – Clara, good-hearted Clara, not fully understanding the consequences her actions would have upon him throughout the space-time continuum.

The room became, to him, the most feared in the castle, as he lived in a constant form of paranoia that he might stumble into it at any moment, with his wits not about him, and mess up what had become to him an attempt at redemption, and yet still an exquisite form of torture. The fear of it kept him wary, in a constant state of exhaustive hyper-vigilance, and even his internal monologues began to falter in fear of the room and what it contained. While he wouldn’t care to admit it to anyone – had there _been_ anyone to admit it to, other than the Veil, the room occupants, and the vision of Clara he held only in his mind’s eye – he was afraid. He was afraid of the room and he was afraid of what it represented, and he was afraid he was making a terrible mistake in what he was striving to do.

 

* * *

 

He’s running, and then he’s slamming, bodily, through the honey-coloured door and bending over, his hands on his thighs as he fights for breath jubilantly, letting out a triumphant yet breathless laugh as he does so, and barely noticing the soft click of the lock behind him. 

“Oh, Clara,” he says euphorically, mostly to himself, to break the silence. “If you could see this old man now…” 

 _You’re certainly running like an old man,_ quips the voice in his head, in a passable imitation of her, and he smiles a little as he straightens up and looks around the room, realising with a sinking feeling where he is and feeling his smile die. 

“Clara…” comes a lilting Cockney voice, and as his eyes adjust to the gloom, he takes in the woman, stood by the fire and garbed all in black, her eyes a little wild as she surveys him in his exhausted glory, somehow knowing who he was despite the change in his face. They always knew him, and he would feel chagrined about this, if it were not for the fact that their berating of him was, more often than not, no less than he deserved. “So you know ‘er name then.” 

“I…” he begins, but he can’t find the words to carry on, because for once this is a woman he absolutely recognises, this is a woman he absolutely knows, because he categorically knows who she is referring to, and he’s suddenly unsure if that’s better or worse than usual. 

“Clara. Clara Oswin Oswald. You knew ‘er, didn’t you? Don’t try and pretend you di’nt, because I know all about you, and I know all about what you did,” the woman snaps, and he flinches as if she’s struck him, because each word is so full of the fire and the anger and the self-assuredness that he remembers of both _his_ Clara and _her_ Clara. “You showed ‘er things above ‘er station, and now she’s only gone and… only gone…” her voice breaks alongside both of his hearts, and he wants to go to her, wants to embrace her and show her, silently, how sorry he is, but he learnt the hard way that such an activity is not a good idea, and so he forces himself not to move. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles instead, trying to avoid looking her in the eye as the memories threaten to overwhelm him. “It was never my…” 

“I don’t care what your _intention_ was, mister!” she spits indignantly, her mood veering wildly at his words, her eyes steely with defiance as she stares him down. “You got her _killed_!” 

She’s weeping, then, great tears rolling down her cheeks as she weeps for her daughter, and he hangs his head and weeps – although more silently than she – remembering the curious governess-cum-barmaid who had caused him, all that time ago, to smile once more, who had reminded him who he was and what his purpose had been. The last Clara he had met before _his_ Clara, the one who had established the final link, the one who had set him on course to… 

 _His_ Clara comes to mind then, fully-formed, unbidden, smiling softly at him, her eyes full of warmth as she encourages him to try and comfort this strange-but-not-strange woman, and he decides to make another attempt. 

“I’m sorry,” he reiterates desperately, but the woman only looks up at him, quietly furious at this unknown man and his platitudes. “She was… she was a wonderful person, and I am deeply-” 

“What? You gonna tell me ‘ow sorry you are? She _was_ wonderful, she was me only daughter, and you _took ‘er away from me!_ ” 

He leans back against the door, remembering Clara’s death, remembering the terror in her eyes as she had fallen, helplessly, through the clouds that had so captivated her, remembering her tiny, broken form as she lay in the snow. He remembered, despite himself, how he had cradled her once he’d materialised the TARDIS around her, wiping the blood from her temples and kissing her forehead, making desperate promises that she would be alright, making foolish assertions that he would fix this. 

 _We can fix this, can’t we? We always fix it._  

He gasps aloud at the memory, at his own Clara’s quiet faith in him, and the sudden realisation that he let her down. Her perceived stupidity, her learned recklessness, it counted for aught that day, as the crushing reality overwhelmed him that he could not fix her. He could not fix her echoes, and he could not fix her, thus they had died for him and his idiocy, they had revelled in their creator’s beautiful foolishness, and blind adoration for him, and each of them had paid the price for a man they loved without consideration of _why_. 

“You better bloody gasp, mister!” the woman spits, and then she’s crossed the room and slapped him hard across the face, and he reels at the sting of her hand on his cheek. _Fire,_ he recognises inwardly. _As much fire as her daughter, and certainly as much as my Clara._ “You can never undo the damage you’ve done! Never!” 

As she continues to hurl pained, half-hearted abuse at him, he holds up one hand and she falls silent. “I never meant for Clara to become involved in what I was doing,” he offers wearily, breaking her tirade. “She was curious… so curious, and I couldn’t discourage that. I wanted to make her my companion – my friend, I wanted her to travel with me, and I would have shown her wonders. But there was an accident, and it was _my_ fault, and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…” 

With a quiet, barely-perceptible _whoosh,_ the woman dissolves into black smoke and the door behind him unlocks, and he staggers out to the corridor taking deep, fortifying breaths, fighting down the urge to vomit as the guilt threatens to consume him, body and soul.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes, it’s the families of echoes he didn’t know, and he isn’t entirely sure whether that’s worse or better. They hold up photographs or etchings of their loved ones, and he studies each face and the extent to which the hair and the eyes and the upturned nose matches that of _his_ Clara, and of course he finds a perfect match each time, despite his expectations to the contrary. In over two billion years, one would expect variation, but each echo manages to be both uniquely themselves and yet undeniably Clara, with each of them having the same wicked smile and bright, curious eyes as their creator. He’s unsure the extent to which this is a blessing or a curse, as it accords him – at least – the ability to emote, to empathise, the ability to display his sentiments of grief and regret, as he simply imagines each unknown echo to be his _own_ Clara. Yet with each echo he hardly knew, he feels a rush of guilt, a sense of deepest remorse that he had overlooked each girl, overlooked each of their actions to save his life, and he vows, silently, that when he leaves here he will visit them all, one by one, to offer his thanks and his appreciation. 

He remembers each of the families, each of the parents and siblings and partners of Claras that he never knew, and in moments of calm he runs through them all, as a form of penance for his actions: a fool’s errand, a dying man’s attempt at atonement. 

There’s the wife of a fifty-first century echo who plunged into a nuclear reactor saving his fifth self, him too encapsulated by his own problems to take account of the selfless girl who died saving an unknown man that she felt oddly drawn to. The wife had stood, stoic and immovable, as he apologised over and over, feeling his hearts rend at the tale she told and the expression of loss on her face.   

There’s the numerous and oddly cordial lovers of an eighteenth century sea captain echo, who had fought the British Navy to free his seventh self from the brig of a vessel he had found himself upon quite accidentally, and had been shot through the heart by a sharpshooter before he had made it above decks. He remembered the incident with a wince, remembered her male steersman’s confidence at the wheel, and his stomach turned as he realised that the echo’s body had been slumped at the base of the wheelhouse, fragile and – at the time – insignificant to his course of action. 

Not only were there lovers. There were parents of all kinds, from all eras, all of whom wept and sobbed and accused, all of whom had lost their daughters to the folly of the Doctor’s hapless cause. 

The worst had been a young couple from 1832, who showed him a portrait of a girl who was barely ten years old but was quite unmistakeably Clara. He’d been stunned into silence as they recounted the tale of how the girl had thrown a foppish young man from the radius of an explosion during the June Uprising, and he realised, with growing horror, that he had caused the explosion in an arrogant, foolhardy attempt to throw off a pursuing Silurian that threatened Paris. At this imparting of knowledge, the Doctor felt his stomach lurch, and he closed his eyes to the world, guilt choking the words from his throat at the knowledge that a child – a mere child – had died in his place, that his young, egotistical self had scarcely even noticed her. He recalled, dimly, there being a child, but he had had other concerns, and the knowledge that he had left her there, her lovely hazel eyes glazed over and staring unseeing at a sky of stars her creator would one day explore, racked him with guilt so absolute he considered ending it all.

 

* * *

 

When he was, after many billions of years and many billions of loved ones, confronted with the parents of Oswin Oswald, he had considered himself to be prepared for the ordeal, expectant as he was for them to appear in the room he had come to despise. Yet as he stood in resigned silence, taking them in, evaluating the situation at hand and preparing his well-rehearsed apology, he realised that they were holding a child, a little girl no older than three, dressed all in red and looking back at him with wide, hazel eyes.

He knew at once, of course, that this could only be Oswin’s daughter. It was not the first child he had seen in this room, not the first descendant that Clara had left behind, her issue often bearing her dark hair or her eyes or her smile, but this was the first child of the echoes he had _known_ that he had been confronted with, and something about that knowing stare triggered a sense of unease within him. 

“Mama,” the little girl said distinctly, staring at him curiously and reaching out one hand to him. “Where mama?” 

He felt a lump form in his throat as he looked from her to Oswin’s parents, an apology dying on his lips as he remembered the terrified young woman who had once saved his life, and the fate she had had to endure at the hands of the Daleks. He closed his eyes, his mind flooded with unwanted visions of icy probes forcing their way into her brain and invading her memories, her attempts to desperately focus on her daughter, and her retreat into a world of her own creation in an attempt to survive the ordeal, in a desperate attempt to fool herself into believing that there was a way for her to return to her family. He felt a profound and acute sense of loss, accompanied by a sense of guilt so overwhelming it robbed him of his breath as he contemplated the situation he had found himself in. 

“I’m sorry,” he said thickly after a moment’s consideration, trying to avoid looking at the child. “She didn’t… I couldn’t save her…” 

“Why?” Oswin’s mother looked at him sadly, and he turned away so that she couldn’t see the single tear bisect his cheek in the half-light, trying to compose himself enough to carry on.

“She was already… she saved me, but it was too late for her.” 

“Tell Clara that,” she said softly, nodding to the small child, and the Doctor felt his hearts clench uncomfortably at the choice of name as he crossed the room and took the toddler’s hand in his own. 

“Clara,” he began, his words thick with sadness, unused to saying the name to another human being. “I’m so, so sorry…” 

He couldn’t say any more. He didn’t need to.

 

* * *

 

By his own estimates, he was almost through the wall. Mere millimetres of azbantium separated him from whatever fate lay upon the other side, and he was making progress through through the castle when he heard the ragged breathing and tell-tale buzzing that predicated the appearance of the Veil, and he dodged sideways and through a black door to avoid the creature. 

He knew immediately where he was, and he knew, furthermore, who awaited him. 

“Doctor,” came Dave Oswald’s quiet voice, with a sense of resignation. “We meet again.” 

The Doctor sighed deeply, closing his eyes and gathering the vestiges of his emotional strength to overcome what faced him – the final trial, he supposed, before his ultimate success. “We do.” He attempted a small smile. “I’m clothed, this time, so that’s a relief.” 

“You look like a magician,” interjected a voice he had heard only through illicit trips to Clara’s past, and then Ellie Oswald unfolded herself from a shadowy armchair and crossed the room to her husband, taking his hand and squeezing it reassuringly. “Dave never mentioned that part.”

“I did,” came a third voice, and the Doctor noticed, with a shock, that Danny Pink was stood before the fireplace, leaning against the mantelpiece with a forced nonchalance and a small smirk that the Time Lord attempted not to find irksome. “That’s his _vibe._ Magician. Deadly killer magician.” 

“I like it,” Clara’s grandmother said with a small grin, and the Doctor looked to her oddly, wondering why, perhaps, this time, the family did not seem quite as hostile to his presence. “Oh, we _are_ hostile,” the elderly lady cut in reassuringly, as if she could read his thoughts. “Rest assured about that, my dear – we are _very_ much hostile. Because we’ll get our answers from you one way or the other, so why not make a little small talk, eh?” 

“That sounds very… torture-y,” the Doctor said uncertainly, taken aback by the unusual shift in mood of the room. “I mean, I know this is a torture chamber, but that’s a bit… direct.” 

“Direct?” Danny asked, his tone measuredly flat and expressionless. “What’s direct is this: Clara needed you to protect her, and you killed her. Maybe not directly, but you killed her.” 

The Doctor, for the first time in a long time, felt his temper flare up at Danny’s accusation. “Clara didn’t need me to protect her,” he snarled, clenching his fists at his sides at the implications. “She wasn’t a damsel in distress, she didn’t need anyone to protect her from the big bad universe.” 

“You weren’t supposed to protect her from the universe,” Ellie said softly, her tone quietly accusatory as she looked up at the Doctor. “You were supposed to protect her from _herself_.” 

“I didn’t… I never knew that she would do what she did…” the Doctor began, his anger dissipating as rapidly as it had appeared. “I didn’t know…” 

“You didn’t know that she was depressed,” Dave stated pragmatically, with a small shrug. “Because she never told you. She didn’t tell anyone. She’s always had that… well, that predisposition. After Ellie…” 

“After I died,” Ellie said coolly, as though talking about her own death in the past tense was a perfectly standard occurrence. “She took to drink, and then she took to the kind of men that no-one wants their little girl to bring home. Men who kicked her down and then kicked her some more. One of them nearly killed her, but she thought it was what she _deserved,_ and she thought she _loved_ him, and so she stayed with him, because that’s what Clara is like, Doctor.” 

“She learned a little better on the deservingness front,” her gran added, sighing a little. “But she never quite overcame the fact that she would do anything – _anything,_ no matter how much damage it would inflict on herself – for the ones she loved.” 

“But…” 

“You’re going to protest that she loved _me_ , aren’t you?” Danny asked rhetorically. “Well, she was ready to die for me, you know. And for a long time after what happened with your pal, she still wanted to. I think she thought that if she took enough stupid risks, she could die, and be with me, and she would be _worthy_ of me for having done what she did. Which was obviously, if you’ll pardon my French, complete shit.” 

“She didn’t have anything to live for,” Dave concurred, his mouth set in a cold, hard line. “We weren’t enough to sustain her existence, Doctor. And then you came back into her life, and oh… it was like you set her on fire again, it was like she remembered how to be. But she was reckless, Doctor. She wanted to impress you, she wanted to be someone you respected. She had nothing to live for, so damn it, she would take those risks to impress you, because there was nothing left to lose.”

“But… I always… I respected her, always…” the Doctor whispered, not understanding what they were saying to him, not _wanting_ to understand the implications of their words. “Why would she…”

“Please,” Danny scoffed unkindly. “Like you didn’t know.”

“Like I didn’t know what?” 

“She was in love with you, dear,” her grandmother said sweetly, her tone almost condescending in its nature. “Head over heels in love with you and that blue box of yours.” 

“She…” 

“She would have died for you if you asked,” Danny said bitterly. “And oh look, you more or less did.” 

“That…” the Doctor began, still struggling to comprehend their words, still wondering if it could possibly be true. “That wasn’t my fault, that wasn’t my decision!” 

“Yes, but _you_ were lured to Trap Street. _You_ were the one they wanted. She died saving _you_ , so her death is _your_ fault. Her students cried, you know?” Dave asked, as an aside. “When they were told. They were devastated. We all were.” 

“I…” the Doctor stammered, tears burning his eyes as he looked to Clara’s father and felt guilt welling up inside him – guilt for letting Clara down, guilt for the hurt he had inflicted on her family, guilt for her death. “I’m sorry, I didn’t ever mean to…” 

“She loved you, and you killed her, Doctor,” Dave said with a shrug. “You killed my daughter, and you killed her echoes – they all died trying to save the great Time Lord who’s too cowardly to even admit the truth.” 

“What truth?!” the Doctor asked nervously, looking between Dave and Danny in confusion. “The hybrid?” 

“Oh no,” Ellie assured him, with a forced smile that only served to be make her words more threatening. “Not that truth. That’s a dull little thing that’s between you and the makers of this hellhole.” 

“You’re not… this isn’t… they’re using you as puppets,” the Doctor implored them, backing away half a step. “You’re not like this, none of you, none of this is true, you’re just trying to get in my head!”

“Oh, the makers might have toyed with the settings a little,” Danny conceded. “Given voice to the deepest, darkest words we were too scared to say out loud. But the base truth of the matter is this: she loved you. She loved you, and you killed her, and you can’t even admit the truth to yourself.” 

“ _What truth_?” the Time Lord roared, and all four of them looked at him with pity, as the flames in the grate blazed abruptly higher, and Clara stepped out from their midst, eyes and skin glowing unnaturally amber as she gazed at him with contempt. He felt his hearts stop in unison as she crossed the room to him – as ethereally beautiful as ever, but everything about her far too bright for this world. Yet he couldn’t quite break away from her gaze, so deprived had he been of the sight of her, and so he kept his eyes on her, trying to drink in the sight of her and commit it to memory. 

“You loved me, you fool,” she murmured, reaching up to cup his cheek, and though her touch scalded his skin, he couldn’t bring himself to pull away from it, instead leaning into her palm a little in search of comfort. “You loved me, but you were afraid, and now I’m dead.”

“Yes,” he whispered, his voice cracking with emotion. “Yes, I loved you, but…” 

With his confession, she crumbled to ash in front of him, and the Doctor gazed around at the remaining four occupants of the room, at a loss for words as he tried to make sense of what had occurred. 

“I’m sorry,” he murmured eventually, his throat tight. “I never knew, and I never thought… I will make this right.” 

“How, Doctor?” Dave asked angrily. “How can you make anything right with my daughter?”

“I’ll fight,” the Doctor promised him. “And I swear to you, I will never stop.”

 

* * *

 

“No, my time… my time is up, Doctor. Between one heartbeat and the last is all the time I have. People like me and you, we should say things to one another. And I'm going to say them now.” Clara said softly, reaching over and taking his hand assertively as he tried to work, pulling him insistently from the task at hand and forcing him to meet her gaze. 

“I already know,” he admitted quietly, his words almost inaudible as he confessed: “I know what you’re going to say. You don’t need to say it.” 

“How can you know?” she asked him, looking up at him with quiet incredulity. “How can you _possibly_ know?” 

“That place… the place where I was, there was a room. And in it were families.” The Doctor explained uncomfortably. “The families of all your echoes, and I had to apologise to each and every one of them, and try and explain _why_ their loved one had done what she did, _why_ she had died how she had.”

“So?” Clara asked, not understanding the point the Doctor was trying to make, her brow furrowing as she surveyed him in the semi-darkness. 

“Well, it’s simple, really,” the Doctor murmured, feeling suddenly shy. “I mean, I had to have it pointed out to me in the end, but then it was simple for me to see.” 

“What was?” Clara asked, hardly daring to hope that he had understood, feeling the ghost sensation of her heart clenching and wishing, in that moment, for her pulse back, so that she might feel the blood pound in her veins. 

“You loved – no, _love_ me,” the Doctor said simply, with a small shrug. “That’s why they died for me. That’s why you did it. You love me, don’t you?” 

Clara felt euphoria consume her, and she knew in that moment that there was little point in denying her feelings. “Yes,” she whispered, tears filling her eyes as she squeezed his hand. “Yes, I do.” 

“Say it,” the Doctor implored her desperately. “Please, four and a half billion years and this godawful suffering and the _guilt,_ please just say it.” 

“I love you,” she breathed, her face melting into a contented smile. “Now are you going to say it back?” 

“I-” he managed, before looking to her oddly, wondering how she could possibly know what he was going to say. “How did you…?” 

“Four and a half billion years, Doctor,” she stated, with a small, chagrined smile, raising her eyebrows at him fractionally as she considered him coolly. “That’s not a duty of care. That’s…” 

“Love, yes,” he conceded, sighing slightly before he continued: “I love you, what else did you think this whole thing was about?” 

“Your people,” Clara said thickly, the truth overwhelming her abruptly. “I thought it was about your people.” 

“Clara, this has never been their story,” the Doctor assured her softly, running his thumb over the back of her hand as he spoke. “It’s always been our story.” 

“Two idiots in a box,” she grinned, half-joyful and half-bemused at the preposterous fruitlessness of their confessions. “Falling in love, but not saying anything until it’s too-” 

“It’s not too late,” the Doctor assured her calmly, trying to make the lie as believable as he possibly could before he broke their hearts forever. “Some things… it’s never too late for some things. Now. Go, speak with them, I’ve nearly got this. We’ll be gone in a few minutes.” 

Clara stood up with a small nod, brushing herself down and striding away from him, towards the edge of the Cloisters and the party that waited there, the party that waited to put an end to their doomed love in the name of the safety and sanctity of the universe. 

The Doctor watched her go, feeling both his hearts break as he considered Clara Oswald, considered all they had just said, and then felt the weight of the neural block in his pocket and was reminded of what he must do in order to protect her, in order to keep her alive and safe away from Ashildr, away from the Time Lords, and away from him. 

 _Love,_ he told himself sternly, to try and stop himself from dithering, _means a duty of care. Love means putting someone else’s needs before your own._  

He closed his eyes and offered an apology to the woman who held his hearts, the woman who had saved galaxies for him, the woman who had put her own life before his own time and time again. 

 _Clara,_ he prayed to her silently. _Clara, my Clara, please forgive me, my love._


End file.
